How small and medium-sized enterprises can now make significant cost savings on traditional agency services

💡 Summary

Strategic brand management is one of the most effective levers for sustainable corporate success—but also one of the most cost-intensive. Many companies outsource the definition of their mission, vision, business model, brand persona, brand DNA, and buyer personas to specialized agencies.

The result is often convincing concepts – but also long project durations, high investments, and a strong dependence on external expertise.

cosmos, the first Strategic Intelligence Platform for brand, marketing, and sales, turns this approach on its head. With a structured, guided, and content-driven system, cosmos enables companies to carry out essential parts of their strategic brand development in-house – efficiently, data-driven, and with full control. The integrated Agency Knowledge System forms the methodological core of this transformation. It replaces traditional agency services with guided workflows, context-based support, and standardized best practices from international consulting agencies.

This article shows which services are typically provided by agencies at high cost, why they are nevertheless indispensable, and how they can be replicated internally with cosmos in an efficient and qualitatively equivalent manner.

The costs of traditional strategic brand work

A well-developed brand positioning, including mission, vision, and buyer personas, is the basis for clear leadership, coherent communication, and market-oriented decisions. Agencies sell these services in the form of consulting projects, workshops, and extensive documentation. The costs arise not only from conceptual work, but above all from individual coordination, feedback loops, and the manual preparation of results.

Typical services and the corresponding average agency costs:

• Mission & vision€3,000–6,000
• Business model€4,000–7,000
• Brand persona€3,000–5,000
• Brand DNA€4,000–6,000
• Buyer personas€6,000–10,000

This results in total costs of €20,000 to €34,000.

These amounts apply per brand project and increase rapidly for international rollouts or multi-brand strategies.

Why these strategic building blocks are indispensable

Developing a clear, differentiated, and targeted brand strategy is not an academic exercise, but an operational necessity. Companies without a strategic foundation make decisions based on gut instinct, spread resources across inefficient measures, and lose relevance among their target group.

A mission describes the current purpose of a company—why it exists and what role it plays in society or the economy. The vision is a long-term goal that aligns leadership, teams, and communication with an overarching direction. It creates meaning and orientation.

The business model defines in a structured way how the company generates value, for whom it creates this value, and how it is delivered. It forms the bridge between strategy, product, and sales.

The brand persona translates this foundation into a consistent, humanly comprehensible brand personality. It governs the tone, language, style, and behavior of the brand across all touchpoints.

The brand DNA anchors values, attitudes, and differentiating features, making it clear what the brand stands for and how it sets itself apart from the competition.

Buyer personas are precise target group profiles based on behavioral data, psychographic patterns, and usage scenarios. They enable messages, offers, and touchpoints to be tailored precisely to the respective decision-making logic.

These and other building blocks form the strategic backbone of all modern brand, marketing, and sales work.

cosmos as a strategic operating system: The Agency Knowledge System

With cosmos, most of these strategic elements can be created in-house—at a methodological level that was previously only available through specialized agencies. This is made possible by the seamlessly integrated Agency Knowledge System.

This system offers a structured toolkit consisting of:

• guided workflows
• context-based tutorials and video guides
• validatable templates
• configurable export options

It is based on the proven frameworks of leading consulting agencies, but is fully interactive, modular, and scalable—all via an intuitive user interface.

Each strategic building block – whether mission & vision or business model – is created along assisted workflows. Users receive contextualized assistance, best practice examples, and methodological guidelines to make informed decisions independently. At the same time, all content can be shared with partners or stakeholders at any time as a LiveLink – always with the latest status.

Important: The Agency Knowledge System is not just a collection of templates. It is a methodological framework that makes strategy work operationally compatible – for campaigns, briefings, product development, or business development.

Economic comparison: Outsourcing vs. in-house

Those who outsource strategic brand development to external consultants or agencies pay not only for the working time, but also for knowledge transfer, project management, and documentation of results. cosmos provides these components in a scalable SaaS model. While agencies charge €20,000 for a one-time project in the best case scenario, cosmos starts at just €489 per month – with all modules and features included.

In addition to the enormous cost savings, working with cosmos offers other significant advantages, including:

• Shorter implementation time
• Complete control over content and adjustments
• No follow-up costs for changes or new briefings
• Better integration into operational tools and systems

Why cosmos is more sustainable than traditional consulting

A central problem with traditional strategy projects is the lack of connectivity. Many concepts remain in presentations or handouts after the project ends. They are not maintained, lose their relevance, and thus their relevance.

cosmos prevents exactly that. The platform dynamically links all strategy elements with target groups, touchpoints, and KPIs and flags any outdated or unvalidated information. This turns strategic brand work into a living part of operational management – fully integrated into marketing, sales, and business development.

With cosmos, validating personas with real-time data, continuously adjusting brand identity, or responding to changing market conditions are no longer special projects, but part of the standard process. This creates true strategic agility.

Conclusion: Think brand strategy in-house – and implement it effectively

Those who previously had to spend five-figure budgets on positioning, personas, or brand DNA now have the opportunity with cosmos to build their brand strategy largely independently, data-driven, and structured—without knowledge loss and with significantly lower agency costs and external dependencies. The Agency Knowledge System makes strategic excellence scalable – for C-level executives, marketing teams, sales managers, and founders alike.

Learn more

Would you like to find out how you can strategically realign your company – without an agency, but with professional results?

Try cosmos™ now for free!